Help me welcome Lisa Medley as we spotlight her story Haunt My Heart.
Haunt My Heart
Haunt
My Heart by Lisa Medley
Paranormal
Romance: Ghost, Witchcraft, Hex and Sex.
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Blurb
A Civil War soldier dies to save his men. Can he find true love to
live again?
Sarah Knight has a job she’s good at, a quirky BFF, and a
boyfriend who’s bad for her. When Sarah unearths a Civil War artifact on a
ghost hunt at Chatham Manor, she brings home more than a souvenir
Lieutenant James “Tanner” Dawson fought for the Union, working as
a supernatural liaison for his Major General in a secret Masonic offset called
the Brothers of Peril. When he’s hexed by a witch, he learns the only way to
save his men is to die himself. But death is not the end. Awakening 150 years
later, he knows if he wants to be corporeal again, he has to find true love to
break the hex—a task no easier in 21st century than it was in the 19th.
Excerpt
from Chapter One:
“Hurry up, Sarah. We’re going to miss the
ghost!”
Sarah
Knight rolled her eyes in the cold December darkness, but trotted after Ellie’s
bouncing flashlight beam. Sarah’s heels crunched through the frozen topsoil as
she crossed the lawn, and she worried about the damage being done to her only
pair of sensible work shoes. Ellie had failed to mention this would be on an
outdoor excursion.
Ellie
had been dragging her out on girls’ nights against her better judgment since
they graduated from college. Last month, they’d gone to a mixed martial arts
fight, complete with blood, screaming and more than one missing tooth. And that
had been the spectators.
Ellie
had a strange idea of fun. It was only in the car on the way over that Sarah
had learned tonight’s adventure would be a ghost hunt.
Sarah
and Ellie caught up to the tour group as the leader, a tall dark-haired man in
his mid-forties, wrapped up his ghost-hunting protocol explanation. She’d
missed the rules. Ellie wouldn’t care about missing that part. She hated
following the rules, but Sarah was a little miffed. If she was going ghost
hunting, she wanted to know exactly what the boundaries were.
“Great,”
Sarah whispered. “We missed the rules.”
“At
least we didn’t miss the ghost,” Ellie pointed out. “And they haven’t doled out
the equipment yet.” Ellie’s mouth split into a mischievous smile, and she
angled up closer to the group leader.
“Again,
my name is Allen if you have any questions during the tour. Since we have such
a large group tonight, we’ll split into two teams. Carla will take this half.”
Allen sliced an imaginary line through the group of twenty or so ghost-hunters.
“And the rest of you will go with me.”
Relieved
she and Ellie were on the same side of the line, Sarah snuggled up closer to
her friend and surveyed the rest of their team. A middle-aged couple, a
grandmotherly woman, and a group of ten sorority girls—exactly the type of
girls she’d avoided in college—made up Team Allen. The girls sported matching
Greek-lettered sweatshirts, scarves and mittens and tittered incessantly. Sarah
was fairly sure their chance of seeing a ghost with this group was nil. Fine
with her. Ellie was the one who went for the paranormal stuff.
“We’ll
walk the path where the Lady in White has typically been spotted. Carla’s team
will cover the grounds around the house,” Allen said. He nodded to Carla, and
she gave him a little salute, then led her team around to the side of the
building. Allen’s group stayed put in the doorway.
“First,
I’ll need a couple of volunteers,” Allen announced.
Ellie’s
hand shot up before Sarah could register what was happening. “We’ll do it.”
Classic
Ellie, leaping before she looked. She didn’t even know what she was
volunteering for. It could be anything. If Allen wanted virgins to sacrifice,
however, he was out of luck.
Allen
pulled two little handheld meter devices out of his messenger bag. His brows
lowered a bit as he studied Ellie, cast his eyes around the group, then settled
back to her. Ellie’s enthusiasm won out and Allen handed one device to her and
the other to Sarah.
“This
is the Anomaly Detector,” Allen said with all the reverence of presenting the
sword Excalibur. “It measures EMP and temperature. If these lights change, it’s
your job to let us know. I’ll be taking photos and interacting with the ghost,
trying to draw her out. I can’t keep my eyes on all of the devices at once. Can
you manage this?”
“Absolutely,”
Ellie squealed.
Sarah
resisted rolling her eyes again. She accepted the detector and did her best to
reduce her scowl.
“It’s
okay to be skeptical,” Allen said. “It makes it all the more exciting when we
convert you to a believer.” His smile warmed and Sarah realized he was actually
handsome. Old, but handsome. What an otherwise normal and attractive man—who
was way old enough to know better—was doing leading a bunch of ghost hunters,
she had no idea. People were strange. She supposed she’d have to include
herself in that judgment, considering she now held a ghost detector.
